


Prologue

by Weesageechak



Series: Darkness in Beacon Hills [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Beacon Hills, Beacon Hills is a town full of crazypeople, M/M, Sparks, Stiles Stilinski Doesn't Know, Stiles Stilinski Doesn't Know About Werewolves, Stiles is a Spark, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:13:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9254693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weesageechak/pseuds/Weesageechak
Summary: This is a short prologue to the series.





	

It’s Saturday afternoon, 4:45 p.m. in a bedroom in Pasadena – the bedroom of Stiles Stilinski, a sixteen-year-old California teenager.

It’s messy here, the floor is covered in comic books, the walls are covered in posters and Stiles’ hands are covered in numbers and doodles.

Let’s just say he’s easily distracted at school.

Not when he’s reading though which is what he’s occupying himself with right now. He’s stretched out on his bed, eyes glued to the page.

“Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light,” he whispers. “Two are one, life and death…”

He turns the page, reads the next couple of sentences and frowns.

“Mmh… like the end and the way.”

Stiles looks up from the book – it’s Ursula K. LeGuin’s _The Left Hand of Darkness_ and he’s gonna have to think about this for a while.

Light is the left hand of darkness…

Two sides of a coin, isn’t that what it means? One couldn’t exist without the other?

See, when he first came across the novel among his grandma’s books, Stiles thought the title was referring to good and evil – as in, they can’t be separated. Both exist in the world and one can only be defined in relation to the other.

Now he’s not so sure anymore.

Maybe – this is more about order.

Order and disorder.

How, what strikes some as disorganization, utter chaos – is structure, their entire world, for others.

Take Stiles’ room for example.

He knows exactly where everything is: his Amazing Stories editions behind his Marvel Comics collections, a part of his calculus homework underneath his lacrosse jersey underneath a plate with a half-eaten piece of pizza on it – all his Nana sees when she comes into his room is the messy den of a sixteen-year-old boy which is why she tells him once a week that Stiles is a catastrophe when it comes to hygiene and that he should clean up his room already, for God’s sake!

So, this doesn’t really have to do with difference in opinion as much as with location, perspective and context – which, okay, _some_ people might argue is a _vital_ part of one’s opinion, but –

Stiles halts in his thoughts.

The phone is ringing.

That is not a surprising event per se – only that his Nana is, apparently, not answering it.

A minute later, it’s still ringing – it seems like it’s urgent – and Stiles jumps from the bed.

He walks into the living room of their small apartment and picks up the phone.

Odd – it’s a Beacon Hills number – a small town up South, several hours from LA. Stiles knows only one person in Beacon Hills – his dad, the sheriff of Beacon Hills, but this isn’t his number.

“Hello?”

But then he drops the phone.

There’s the reason his grandmother didn’t answer, right there in front of him.

She’s stretched out on the floor, but not like Stiles until five minutes ago, not relaxed, but squirming in agony, her face distorted, her right hand clutched to her chest. No sound is coming out of her mouth.

She’s having a heart attack.

Stiles just stands there for one second, two, three – then he is on his knees, next to his grandma, clutching her hand and telling her that it will be fine, all will be well, just – just stay with me, okay? Don’t you _dare_ leave me.

He’s already dialing 911, not even thinking about the Beacon Hills number anymore, and it doesn’t matter either because when Stiles had pressed the green button on the phone and put it to his ear, seconds before he saw his Nana, the line had already gone dead.

 

 

 

A day later, Stiles is still sitting at a hospital bed.

He refused to be taken home.

What would he even do there?

His Nana is all he has.

She’s squeezing his hand weakly now and smiling at him the way she always does and Stiles is just grateful. For a dreadful hour he thought he would never see that smile again.

“You have to, boy,” she is saying now in her old and hoarse voice that is sounding just a tad older now, after the heart attack left her weak and fragile, “You’re only sixteen. You can’t care for yourself.”

“No,” Stiles says without further explanation.

This is a conversation they’ve already had a couple of times during the past hours.

“Please, Stiles – be reasonable. You heard what Dr. Hoffman said – I won’t be able to stay by myself.”

“But you wouldn’t be by yourself. You have me!”

She’s smiling at him warmly.

“You shouldn’t spend your youth looking after an old, invalid lady. It’s not right.”

“But you look a lot better already!”

“I’m seventy-two years old, Stiles. I’m going go live in a home – and you are going to go live with your dad in Beacon Hills. And it’s all going to be just fine.”

“No,” Stiles repeats stubbornly, meaning both the plan she laid out to him and her claim that all will be fine. His eyes are welling up with tears.

“Stiles… you will be happy in Beacon Hills. Your dad is happy to have you. You should have moved there a long time ago anyway and – it’s all for the best.”

This time, Stiles doesn’t say no.

He's rubbing at his eyes angrily.

“There, there,” his Nana says, patting the back of his hand. She turns her head a little and nods at someone behind Stiles.

“…your dad is here to pick you up.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Don’t worry, Stiles…,” sheriff Stilinski says while he’s steering his cruiser through downtown LA.

Because, of course he’d come pick him up in his cruiser.

And, of course they’d get lost right after setting off from Grandma Stilinski’s apartment.

“…it’s just as I thought,” the sheriff is musing now. “The old lady is going to be just fine.”

Stiles is too sad and angry altogether to point out that someone who had a heart attack is not ‘going to be just fine.’ And why does everyone keep telling him that anyway?

It’s universal code for ‘ _hings are really bad, but I don’t want you to worry – even though things are really bad.’_

Everyone knows that.

“Er, are you hungry?”

No response.

Stiles turns his head away from his father.

“I brought tuna sandwiches.”

Right.

His dad is kind of – a seafood enthusiast.

But then, Stiles doesn’t know much more about his old man than that. Stiles was raised by his grandmother, she has always been both mother and father to him – at least since Stiles’ mom, grandma Stilinski’s daughter, died and his dad moved back to Beacon Hills to work in the sheriff’s department.

Stiles had never asked him why.

He figured his father was just an egotistical man.

“You can’t give me the silent treatment forever, son,” the sheriff says now. “You’re going to have to talk to me eventually.”

“I don’t, just watch me,” Stiles says.

His father cracks a smile and after a while, Stiles can’t help himself.

The old man is right – well, partly at least.

Stiles _can_ stay angry forever – not that this is specifically his dad’s fault, but, you know, angry in general – but he’s starting to get sick of the bitter feeling in his stomach.

He sighs and says, “I’ll take a sandwich – but I’m gonna take the tuna off.”

“Suit yourself,” the sheriff says with a grin. “There’s also shrimp salad on them – er – I’m gonna guess you’ll want to scrape that off, too…”

“Two dry buns it is,” Stiles mutters darkly – but then he unwraps the sandwich and simply takes a bite.

 

 

 

“Just how deep are these woods?” Stiles says five hours later. They must be surrounded with miles and miles of forest.

“Well, yes, there’s a lot of trees here,” his dad says which is neither an appropriate answer, nor an interesting piece of information – it’s just a statement.

Stiles rolls his eyes and when he’s looking straight ahead again, he can see it.

A town sign.

Here they are.

Beacon fucking Hills.

The most boring and insignificant town in the entire Southwest.

Possibly the world.

Stiles throws the sign a dark look. The words ‘WELCOME TO BEACON HILLS – Home of the Cyclones’ are adorned with awkward drawings of two beacons and a couple of cheerful bees and, for some inexplicable reason, a laughing mermaid. And there’s not even a lake close to this town.

The mermaid has red hair and red eyes.

Why you ask?

The people here are just cuckoo. That’s why.

Stiles throws his head back against the headrest and lets out a long, frustrated sigh.

God.

He’s going to have to spend the rest of his teenage years in this dump.

This is going to be just awful.


End file.
